


Walmart

by cocoacremeandgays



Series: Dirk's Not-So-Alphabetical Alphabet [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angry Bro, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dave Plays Softball, Dirk Has an Autism Spectrum Disorder of Some Sort, Dirk and Dave are Twins, Echolalia, Gen, Pesterlog, Stimming, Walmart Situations, sensory processing disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 02:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7082380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoacremeandgays/pseuds/cocoacremeandgays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You groan loudly to yourself to stop it, stop it, stop it, because she did something she definitely wasn't supposed to. You can't do that, you can't do that, that's not right.</p>
<p>It's not right, damn it!</p>
<p>((Alternatively known as: Dirk goes on a quick shopping trip to Walmart with his family. Needless to say, things don't go quite as planned.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walmart

**Author's Note:**

> Just for reference, Dave and Dirk are around the age of fifteen in this.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 21:21 --

TT: Well, fuck.  
TT: It seems we have found ourselves at an impasse, here.  
TT: I don't know if we're going to need to cut straight through or induce a screeching halt to keep ourselves from potential death into a downfallen abyss screaming at the youths of this generation.  
TT: Which would be unfortunate.  
TT: As abysmal as my analogies have become over the years of inept relative solitude before your ass showed up on our beloved pseudo-home doorstep, I'd like to say they're still at least a little amusing.  
TT: Or, you know, worthy of some sort of response.  
TT: What, did I catch you at a bad time?  
TT: Are you eating cereal?  
TT: Buttering toast?  
TT: Taking the most beautifully constructed piss ever documented in world history?  
TT: Well, if you're doing the latter, I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell you that, no.  
TT: Unless you are doing so out the window of the damn apartment complex, doing a handstand and watching the rigid stream decidedly caress the air in an aptitude for writing excellent poetry, you are definitely not taking the most beautifully constructed piss ever documented in world history.  
TT: You are also going to get us kicked out if you do that, so don't do that.  
TT: Because, honestly, I wouldn't hold it against you if you got an idea from one of my shittily abysmal analogies.  
TT: Shame on you.  
TG: you done yet  
TT: Depends.  
TT: Are you done taking one of the most boring, controlled pisses in the history of Striderkind?  
TG: newsflash i wasnt pissing in any way shape or form you ironic douchecanoe  
TT: Wow, shocking.  
TG: i was reading your shitty little monologue that is honest to god worth less than my spit which is actually incredibly expensive technically but thats for no gooders  
TG: so shame on you for jumping to conclusions that you could sell anyones mouth juices to the public for more than a penny  
TG: besides the only people who would even buy that shit are in a free shipping and handling induced coma  
TT: Good to know your own analogies are just as shitty and abysmal.  
TG: that wasnt even an analogy it was just common sense  
TT: So was mine.  
TG: no, yours was the epitome of the stereotypical white chick worried about her reputation being ruined because some guy at band camp knocked her up and then suddenly everyones pregnant  
TG: mine was the legitimacy of how a white girl wishes she could get herself knocked up but shes still thirteen shes still a baby her mom wont let her have sex with a man til shes married  
TG: see, mine was cold hard truth  
TG: yours was overly fabricated fiction.  
TT: So, what you're saying is, my analogy skill level literally consists of the entire story of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager", and your analogy skill level is that one episode of the Maury show.  
TG: no  
TT: Because that is literally what you just explained to me.  
TG: nope  
TG: fraid not, mi amigo  
TT: That was Spanish, Dave. We aren't in a Spanish-speaking country. Don't speak Spanish.  
TT: Plus, it wasn't all that great.  
TG: are you tellin me my spanish wasnt on fleek  
TG: because bitch my spanish was so on fleek  
TG: i take spanish  
TG: i am the spanish warlord  
TT: Dave, do us all a grand, interrogative favor and never say that again.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] has ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 21:54 --

 

You click off your computer and push away from your desk by rolling your desk chair backwards, letting your arms lay against the rather uncomfortable plastic arm rests that reside, serendipitous, at your sides. From rather unfortunate circumstances that have occurred in the past with your desk chair, and it's unceremoniously colored and textured arm rests, you have further discovered to put on your sweatshirt before sitting down in it. Just a cautionary step to add in to your regime, though it was honestly rather difficult to make that change.

Because to make that change, you would need to push around everything else. You would need to wake up half an hour earlier, you had decided, in order to put in the amount of homework time you need to have in your day, and even though it was split up throughout the day (and you don't really like splitting things up in your day). The reason you would need to wake up earlier, is because putting on your sweatshirt takes an embarrassing ten minutes to do, between distractions, thought "trains", and tactile difficulties.

The longer it takes to put on your sweatshirt, the earlier you have to wake up, in order to put in those last ten minutes of homework time. You need to move homework time in the afternoons back ten minutes, to 19:10, in order to have time between then and 19:25, which is when you start your computer time. Computer time is from the moment you sit down in your computer chair, to the moment you shut down your computer and stand up from your computer chair. Dinner is at 20:30, so you get up from your computer at 20:28, to have time to walk downstairs and sit down at the dinner table with Dave, Bro, and David. Dinner lasts from the time that you sit down (20:30) to the time that you clean your plate (20:50). Then you go back upstairs, and go back to computer time, unless it's a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, then you grab your sketch pad and draw for an hour. You stop this recreational period at 21:55.

Nightly routine thoughts coming to a close, you stand up from your desk chair and then push it back in to the little nook it fits casually into in the desk. You do so using the black metal bar sticking out horizontal to the floor, vertical to the width of the chair. You don't know what this bar is for, but you use it for many things. To push in your chair, for example, and to rest your sweatshirt when you're done with it. Which you are, technically, but you don't want to take it off. You might run into some sort of texture that really throws you off, and since you're wearing a tank top underneath your sweatshirt, you'd much rather not take it off.

It's a good thing that your sweatshirt has a good fabric texture. Very smooth. You can hardly feel the little bumps of each strand of thread having gone into creating it. The feeling of the threads under the pads of your fingers gives you an awful taste in your mouth. It hurts. It actually, physically hurts, and though you like to come off as a rather "masochistic" or "sadistic" individual, you honestly are not.

You groan when the door to your bedroom opens, combating the squeaking of the door's hinges with your own noise, because you can deal with your noise. You're fine with your noise. Your groans are soothing, very soothing, there you go. You are soothed. You're great. Okay. With a turn of your head, you face whoever had decided to go ahead with opening your door.

It's Dave.

"Jeez, man," he says, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. Dave leans his right shoulder casually against your doorframe, and his face holds an indifferent expression. You like living here, because the severe lack of facial expressions among your family really helps you out. Facial expressions mean honestly nothing to you, and you can't really tell why. "I know you hate your door noise, but that groaning you did there was pretty animalistic."

"It wasn't animalistic, it was input," you respond.

"Yeah, yeah, and your animalistic groaning noises are your good input to displace the bad input, whatever the fuck that means. Honestly, that doesn't make sense. We're supposed to have a connection. A real bond," as Dave says this, he gestures to himself with his right hand, and you with his left. "But we don't have a bond. I understand you less than Bro does, and he understands diddly squat."

"I don't think Bro understands diddly squat, Dave."

"Right, right, he understands less than diddly squat."

You and Dave take a comfortable settlement in a staring match, though it's not really much of a staring match. It's more of an attempt at one, if anything, because you're not staring at each other, not to mention you aren't holding eye contact. Both of your pairs of shades prove it difficult to do that consistently.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot why I decided to disturb you," Dave says.

"Then get out."

"Uh, wow, rude."

"Not rude, I'm just telling you to get out." You don't really want Dave in here anymore, he's really throwing off your schedule. You're supposed to be getting ready for bed, not talking to Dave as he leans against the door frame.

"Dude, that's rude. How would you feel if you walked into my room to tell me something incredibly important, and I told you to get out?"

"I wouldn't feel anything, I'd get out, like you told me," you purse your lips and furrow your eye brows, and though the expression literally means nothing to you, from your highly concentrated analysis on people outside of your comfort zone while in public places, the expression you're trying your best to achieve in success is something you've determined is executed by someone who is "thoroughly" or "nearly upset".

"You're so socially inept it makes my social butterfly personality shrivel and die in the burning wreckage of your failed attempts at personality," Dave tells you. This means nothing to you, but you accept it and save it through and into the "memory banks". It'll come back to "bite Dave in the ass" later. "Anyway, we're going to Walmart, so get your shoes on and lets blow this pop stand."

"What pop stand?"

Dave groans, turning his chin upwards so his face is horizontal with the ceiling. You're pretty sure he's exasperated as all hell, and you don't know why he's so distraught, or even what he's so distraught over. This perturbs the air around you. It's distressing. You don't really enjoy this.

"What?" You ask. Dave is back to normal now.

"Nothing. C'mon and get in the car before I vomit in your shoes." You know he isn't going to do that, but you follow him out of your room anyway, not willing to chance his statement saying that he was willing to.

 

~*~*~

 

As soon as you stepped into the car, you knew that this was going to be one hellish trip, and not in an "ironic" Dave Strider way, either. In a "terrifyingly repetitive" Dirk Strider way, also known pretty well as your way, because that is you. You are Dirk Strider, not anyone else. If you were someone else, you would be incredibly distressed and it would be incredibly silly to think of something such a way.

You're not quite sure why you didn't question Dave about the four of you going to Walmart, but you definitely didn't ask about it, and you still haven't asked about it, even though you're halfway to the superstore and it's actually really stressing you out. You know it's going to be difficult with the amount of people, and the sounds and lights always give you a headache great enough to rival a migraine, though you never throw up. Your family is notorious for hating Walmart for some reason, Bro going so far as to say that he and David boycott the place. You're not quite sure why, exactly, but you definitely don't mind not going there often.

You, personally, have only been to Walmart once. It was in February, so it was four months ago, and when you went there then, it was pretty damn stressful. You were not happy, but Dave seemed pretty buoyant about that having been your first experience. You guys ended up not finding anything that you had gone there to get, though Dave didn't leave empty handed. He got a package of M&M's, which he later gave to a homeless person, and a bottle of aspirin. To this day, you are still perplexed as to why he bought aspirin. Neither of you are physically able to swallow pills of any kind, so unless he pawned that off to a homeless person as well, or he gave it to David (who is actually rather prone to headaches), you think he might have done it "for the ironies".

"Why are we going to Walmart?" You finally pipe up from the back left corner of the red pickup truck. Bro grunts in response, and Dave is just continuously uttering to himself in the back right side, across from you. David seems the only one of the three of them coherent enough to answer you properly.

"Dave starts softball up again in a few weeks. We need to get him a new bad and a few balls for practice hitting and catching," David explains, and you're pretty sure he's trying to be enthusiastic, but you definitely aren't one hundred percent sure. David is difficult for you to read. Then again, pretty much everyone else in the world is, too. Well, you can't technically say that, because you haven't met everyone in the world, and you more than likely never will, but everyone you've met so far is incredibly difficult for you to understand.

"Why are we going now?" You ask, trying to display your discomfort in a way that isn't too direct, but at the same time, isn't too discreet, either. This proves itself difficult, and you just sound normal. You think you sound normal, anyway. You can never be too sure. "It's already 22:00."

"If we don't get this done now, the odds of us actually ever gettin' it done, are incredibly close to zero," says Bro, turning left into the large parking lot. It's a very wide open space, which you find even more disconcerting than you probably should, because it's a parking lot, for goodness sake, it's supposed to be a big, wide open space. Cars aren't exactly small. "And that, kid, is why we're goin' to Walmart, because the piece a shit ne'er closes it's goddamn doors. Even Target's got some decency left in 'er-- ouch!" Bro hisses through his teeth as David jabs him in the ribs with his elbow. You think it's more than likely that it was to get Bro to shut up.

"Ignore his insults. Walmart's fun, you'll like it there," David cuts in, Bro growling contemptuously.

"I've been there," you tell David, "and I don't like it there."

"See? the kid's got sense-- ow, 'ey, watch it! I'm drivin' here," Bro exclaims and pulls the truck into a parking space; one relatively close to the main doors. One of the first things you notice when you look out the windshield, are the big, luminescent letters that read _"Walmart"_. It's honestly a lot like the sign is shouting at you. You don't enjoy this very much at all. "Alright, everyone out of the car."

With that, all four of you get out of the pickup truck, and once Bro locks it again, you all head into the doors of the superstore. As you walk, you instantly notice the smell. It doesn't smell bad, you actually rather enjoy the smell of it, but it's the first thing you notice. It's noteworthy, in your mind, as are a lot of things that you encounter throughout the day. Just like Dave telling you that you're so socially inept it makes his social butterfly personality shrivel and die in the burning wreckage of your failed personality. Recognition through with the "memory banks". 

You stare down at your feet as you walk, when someone looks you in the face and lifts their eye brows at you for a second. It was weird, and you didn't like it. Your shoes are dirty, you note, and with a fluid, absent minded motion, you bring your hand up to your earlobe and begin rubbing the soft, dry skin that resides there and around your ear. There we go, that's nice.

You're interrupted, though, when Dave nudges your shoulder. "What?" You ask, imitating your previous expression when you had been in your room before. You can feel Dave's eyes on you, so you ignore the fleeting warning feeling in your chest and perk your gaze up towards where you think his face is. He is, indeed, looking at you, and his hand is held out towards you. You don't know what he wants. "What?" You ask again, a little more insistently.

Dave rolls his eyes (you can see the bright red behind his shades), exasperated, most likely; and pulls your hand away from your ear. He takes it in his own, squeezes it tightly, and you both continue through the aisles of Walmart, holding hands. This is okay. This is great. Good. Tight is good. You breathe out, a simplistic action, and stare strictly straight foreword. This is good.

Though you didn't want to be here in the first place, you felt tension slowly easing itself out of your chest, and the four of you continued on your merry (or not so merry) way through the relatively empty aisles of Walmart. Unfortunately enough for you, you ended up getting really fed up with the amount of walking you had needed to do. The sports area was all the way across to the left hand side of the store, and that was kind of infuriating in and of itself. It took forever to get there, too, because Bro and David ended up getting distracted by a bunch of fuzzy pillows that had taken shelter in one of those large, plastic encasement things that generally hold very large, plastic beach balls.

"Ick, quit throwin' the merchandise at me," said Bro, face turning to one of disgust as he threw the hot pink piece of stuffed fabric back towards David's face.

"Lighten up, man, it's a hot pink fuzzy pillow. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity, Bro," you're not quite sure what David was trying to do here, because whenever he says that, Bro never listens to him.

" 'Once in a lifetime opportunity'? David, these things are shittier than flat orange soda, and the amount of shitty that is flat orange soda, is hella. Let's get the softball shit and go." You can't help but agree with Bro.

"No, Bro, let's get ten of these first."

"Seriously, put the little runts down and lets get'ta move on."

"C'mon, Bro, it's orange. You like orange."

"Not when it's a foot wide, fuzzy and round, I don't."

Thankfully, the conversation deterred quickly, and David was no longer obsessed with the round, fuzzy pillows. Your trek on to the sports section of the store continued at a faster pace, and you cut right through the aisle with all the trashcans and recycling bins.

Once you arrived to the sports area, you were instantly relieved to find only a very small section, maybe a four foot by five foot area of what Dave needed for his softball hobby. It took a lot of convincing to get Dave to pick something out, though, because for some reason, he seemed incredibly on edge and jumpy.

You couldn't blame him.

"Dave, just pick a bat," Bro gestured to the eight total bats that were on display. Two of which were baseball bats, three of which were too small for Dave, and one of which was much too big. That really limited his options to two, and one was a vibrant purple, while the other was red. Needless to say, Dave picked the red one.

Now it was on to the balls.

Dave didn't make a decision, so Bro grabbed two softballs which were on the softer side of possible choices. He then gestured towards the gloves. "Okay, try one on. If it don't fit, go to the next one."

Oh god.

This'll be a while.

~*~*~

Ten minutes later, and Bro finally lead you out of the sports section, and you couldn't even begin to express how indubitably relieved you were by this. You could tell it was already well past 22:55, which is generally when you need to be in bed if you were planning on sleeping at all that night, but apparently you aren't going to be sleeping tonight, because it's well past 22:55. This statement could go on in a redundant circle, but you're not quite that determined to prove your point.

You trudge along behind Bro, making soft squeaking noises as Bro and David opt to buy a new trashcan, because, apparently, yours really isn't all that great. What seemed to get on Bro's nerves, however, was the fact that whenever Bro said a one-worded, simplistic answer to David's questions, you would find yourself indefinitely repeating it. You couldn't really help it, though. You just did it.

Bro purposefully directed David away from the route which had the fuzzy round pillows of various colors that probably don't even begin to compare in resemblance to a rainbow, as to avoid a part two of that fiasco happening tonight. Knowing David, it probably would have happened if Bro hadn't have taken an extra precautionary measure against it.

"Hey, Dirk, guess what..." Dave had begun, and when he trailed off, you didn't reply. That phrase always caught you off guard, because, unbeknownst to most people, the simplicity of the sentence always confused you in such a way that it would bother you to no end. It was almost physically painful, just like when you ran your fingers along the edge of something with a bunch of prominent threads. That thought makes you keen quietly.

Dave should have known, however, that that phrase always upsets you, and to display your dissatisfaction with his incorrect judgement, you give a plain and monotonous, "No," just like the ABA therapist would do when you did a task wrong. You didn't like her. She treated you as if you were an idiot, which you are not. You know she was just doing her job, to an extent, but you still didn't like her.

Thankfully, Dave didn't make you "guess what" after that.

After a few seconds of searching, Bro finally corralled you all into a line which wasn't completely filled with an ungodly amount of people in it at one time, and you were happy about that. You were not happy in the slightest, however, when he handed off the items, which were not yours, by the way, to you. Bat, glove, balls and all.

Needless to say, you have little to no idea what in the "ever loving fuck" you are supposedly supposed to do with them.

To combat against this confusion and underlying distress, you whine audibly and try to hand the items back to Bro, but Bro just grunted hard in what he would probably deem a satisfactory response. "I don't know what to do with them," you explain, trying not to whine too much. You aren't quite sure if you succeeded, but you tried.

"Put 'em up on the belt." Bro said, gesturing up to the moving belt thing that you never learned the name of, where the cashier takes your items and touches them before giving them back. Sure, scanning was a big thing that goes along with that, but you can overlook that, and you do.

But guess what?

You didn't want to come here in the first place.

You watch tensely as the cashier woman picks up the softball bat and runs the bar code under the scanner. It beeps satisfyingly, and she puts it into a plastic bag, with "Walmart" put in blue letters on the side. You tense even further when she picks up the glove, scans it, and puts it in the bag as well. The balls come soon after, and when you watch her put them into the plastic bag, you notice quickly that she didn't scan either of them.

She just put them in the fucking bag.

"No, no, no, no, no," You utter, shaking your head and shaking your body briefly as well, because that isn't right, that isn't alright, that definitely is not alright, because she put them in the fucking bag without scanning them.

As if the four of you were idiots.

"That's not right, you can't do that, umm..."

Immediately, you whine and rub your hands up the back of your neck, before going ahead and flapping them intensely, because no. No. No. No. That isn't right. Not at all. It isn't right at all.

Bro pays, and she hands you the plastic bag with the receipt inside.

You groan loudly to yourself to stop it, stop it, stop it, because she did something she definitely wasn't supposed to. You can't do that, you can't do that, that's not right.

It's not right, damn it!

"Dude, you okay?" Dave asks quietly, and Bro grabs the plastic bag, beginning to walk away. Dave, yourself, and David follow behind him respectively. You're still in immense discomfort and damn near on the edge of pain from watching her break the rules, that isn't what you do, you can't break the rules like that at a job like this that costs money, you can't frame us for stealing.

"She- the lady, didn't scan all of our items, she only scanned the bat and the glove, not the balls, not the balls, she didn't scan the balls," you reiterate over, and over, and over, because you feel that maybe if you say it enough, it'll undo itself and maybe Bro will hear you, and he'll go back and it'll all be okay.

The look on Dave's face reads that he understands your stress, without actually understanding the fact that you're so distressed about the stress which is totally not legitimately making you feel like absolutely terrible shit. "Shit. Hold up, Bro," Dave catches up with Bro.

"What do you need, kid?" Bro asks, and you watch as he carries the bag by its handles, as if nothing had gone wrong at all.

"That scanner chick, whatever the fuck, totally forgot to scan the balls. The only things that were put on the tab were the bat and the glove," Dave explains, nodding towards the bag as a whole.

Bro stops, gives Dave an "incredulous" look, and snatches the receipt out of the bag as if it were on fire, and it would catch the items on fire, as well. "God damn," he mutters as he reads off what was put on the receipt. He turns around, and you can see the fiery orange color of his eyes. The expression on his face seemed ticked off. Or maybe he was sad. You can't tell. Both expressions look the same to you.

"Goddamn," Bro reiterates, making his trek back towards the check-out lines. He waves you off when you try to follow. "Never would'a noticed. Would'a expected her to know how to do her job." He mutters all the way to the self check-out, where you can only imagine he's talking about how the "only way to get things done right, is to do it yourself."

"Good catch, man," Dave pats you on the shoulder. You cringe away, and he realizes his mistake a little too late. You hate it when people do that. It's unexpected, not good, bad, bad in about one hundred thousand different ways. "Uh- I never would have noticed."

"Bro said that already," You grumble, rocking on the balls of your feet. You try to pull your sweater tighter around your body, but it doesn't help, the fabric is intense to the palms of your hands, which are currently way too hypersensitive to the touches that it might receive. You immediately let go, and go back to trying to rub at your ear lobe. You feel gross.

"Let's go back to the car," David suggests, and the three of you walk back out into the humid summer night while Bro fumbles over the self check-out.

You clamber unceremoniously up into the back seat of the familiar red pickup truck that Bro drives, and Dave follows you in. David gets into the driver's seat, which bothers you more than you know it should, and you want to chill out, but you're much too on edge to do that.

Dave seems to understand this, and he scoots up next to you, sliding his arms around you comfortably, before squeezing your torso tight, tight, tight. You feel the relief instantaneously, and you begin to rock in your seat.

You fall asleep shortly after you see Bro walking towards the red pickup truck, and the words that he and David speak to each other in hushed tones don't break into your subconscious landscape. You've never been more relaxed.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a story I wrote. That happened.  
> This will be the first of 26 one-shots with an ASD Dirk Strider.  
> Cheers!


End file.
